I am a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, I also am a Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution with the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. I am the author and editor of numerous books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire, The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington, and Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics. I am a graduate of Florida State University and Stanford Law School.

Spending money is like mainlining heroin to politicians. It doesn’t matter how often they promise to reform. They just can’t quit.

The biggest outlays are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon. Future spending on the first three programs is destined to explode in coming years because of demography (an aging population) and health care cost inflation (ObamaCare exacerbates the problem of third party payment). Yet anyone who suggests even slowing expenditure growth in any of the four risks instant demonization.

The fifth largest category is interest, and will continue to increase as Uncle Sam spends more on other programs, requiring additional borrowing. This outlay also could explode if investors grow less confident in the U.S. economy. Within the decade Uncle Sam could be spending more on interest payments than on the military today.

Legislators prefer to focus on so-called domestic discretionary spending, which makes up less than a fifth of current outlays. Even here Congresses and presidents remain reluctant to make serious cuts. Rather than slaughter the herds of sacred cows which populate Washington D.C., legislators prefer to borrow to preserve the most incompetent bureaucracies and unnecessary programs.

Last year the Government Accountability Office proposed action in 81 categories to reduce waste. Alas, reported GAO last month, only four of the 81, or five percent, have since been resolved. Nothing was done in 17 instances, one-fifth of the total. Legislators did something in 60 of them, or three-quarters, but the result was less then than meets the eye, since even a small step counted as “action.”

Overall spending has continued its inexorable rise and most of the programs targeted by GAO continue. The agency felt the need to repeat its search for government waste—which proved to be far too easy. Hence the agency’s 423-page “2012 Annual Report: Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance Revenue.”

It is time for some clear-cutting in Washington, and the latest GAO study provides a helpful guide on where to start with “discretionary” outlays. In 32 areas, the agency explained, it “found evidence of duplication, overlap, or fragmentation among federal government programs.” GAO also highlighted 19 areas to save or collect more money.

Good stewardship is the sine qua non of any effort to restore Washington’s fiscal health. Legislators who take peoples’ earnings—especially those who constantly clamor to take more money from more people—have a responsibility to use that money responsibly. Unfortunately, no one in Washington is doing so today.

GAO started with food and agriculture, where its warnings long have been ignored. “For many years, GAO has reported that federal oversight of food safety is fragmented and results in inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources,” stated the agency’s latest report. Five years ago GAO “added food safety to its list of high-risk areas that warrant attention by Congress and the executive branch.” Despite last year’s warning, food and agriculture defense policy responsibilities remain “fragmented and cut across at least nine different agencies.”

The Pentagon is concerned about airborne electronic attack, but is spending inefficiently in response. Observed GAO: “All four military services within the Department of Defense are separately acquiring new airborne electronic attack systems.” Outlays from 2007 to 2016 will approach $18 billion but “With the prospect of slowly growing or flat defense budgets for years to come, the department must get better returns on its weapon system investments and find ways to deliver more capability to the warfighter for less than it has in the past.” Unfortunately, GAO found that recourse to “the department’s urgent needs processes often lead to multiple entities responding to requests for similar capabilities, resulting in potential duplication of efforts.”

Spending on unmanned aircraft systems is even greater, more than $37.5 billion from 2012 to 2016. Yet, explained GAO, “Ineffective acquisition practices and collaboration efforts in the Department of Defense unmanned aircraft systems portfolio creates overlap and the potential for duplication among a number of current programs and systems.” The Pentagon “does not prioritize requirements, consider redundancies across proposed programs, or prioritize and analyze capability gaps in a consistent manner.”

As improvised explosive devices turned into the deadliest weapon against U.S. military forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, DOD poured ever more money—$60 billion through 2011 for the Joint IED Defeat Organization and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Task Forces alone—into efforts to counter the threat. Yet the Pentagon has mismanaged this high profile priority: “Without a comprehensive listing of counter-IED initiatives, DOD components may be unaware of the total spectrum of counter-IED efforts within the department, and thereby continue to independently pursue counter-IED efforts that focus on similar technologies and may be duplicative. GAO identified three examples of potential duplication within DOD counter-IED efforts focusing on relatively high-cost areas.”

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